A Funny Story About Awareness:

A lecturer teaching medicine was tutoring a class that involved observation and awareness. He took out a jar of yellow-colored liquid.

“This”, he explained, “is urine. To be a doctor, you have to be observant to color, smell, sight, and taste.”

After saying this, he dipped his finger into the jar and put it in his mouth. His class watched in amazement, most, in disgust. He passed the jar around. Eager to be good students, as the jar made its rounds, one by one, each student dipped one finger into the jar and then put it into their mouth.

After the last student was done, the lecturer shook his head:

“If any of you had been observant, you would have noticed that I put my second finger into the jar and my third finger into my mouth.”

: )

Awareness and the Big Picture:

Now that I’ve got you smiling, I want to point something out. The students got fixated on the shock of what their prof was doing and stopped observing. That’s what we all do. We notice the shocking, the awful, the bad stuff and lose our awareness of everything else.

As I’ve mentioned before, the brain has a propensity to notice what’s wrong–that’s a defense mechanism from when we lived in caves and had to be on the alert for sounds and sights that could mean danger.

These days, however, we need to balance that brain tendency by keeping our awareness on what’s good –otherwise we’ll lose perspective and get depressed. With 1 in 4 people suffering from depression in our culture, it’s crucial that we keep a balanced point of view. So, today, ask yourself a few times, “What’s good in my life?” Or, “What’s good right now?”

Awareness and the Search for Good:

This question will lead your brain to find good things. And when it does, you’ll feel happier. And feeling happier creates health–in our bodies, in our work place and in our  relationships.Besides, happier people live longer! So, use your awareness for a richer and longer life.